Paper Chasers

We are a country of big money but no money.

RM800 million Palace, but no money to pay the workers. RM4.6b (or is it 8b? 12.5b?) for the PKFZ and no money to pay the bondholders. Billions here and billions there and YET no money to fund brainy / crème of the crop / brilliant students at Ivy-league Universities.

Let’s not count the leaks of Felda, Sime Darby, et cetera et cetera (Not to be mistaken with Peter Cetera. Wonder what the former Chicago crooner is doing these days?)

Like Bonnie Tyler used to sing:”Where’re all the money gone and where are all the cash?” (My tweaks, of course)

Sometime it is so bloody depressing to read the news that you just skip everything and go right to the adverts, the entertainment pages, the sport pages, the cartoons, the tech-pages..

I’ve gone beyond cynical to being downright disillusioned: a total disbelief of anything that comes out of the mouth of our authoritative mouthpieces.

Everything seems to be agend-ise towards the furthering some grandiose money-making (for somebody, I suppose) scheme or project or whatever.

Have we reached a stage where “Money rules” over everything else?

I was teaching my daughter of Year 2 the usage of countable and non-countable nouns of much, a little, many and a few the other night and came to a sentence with the word “money”.

I told her that money falls into the non-countable nouns category, which elicited a bewildered look on her face.

“You gave me RM4 everyday to school. So how can money be not countable?”

I have to admit of not learning this facet of the English Grammar, having learnt the language via the “If it sounds, correct, it must be” technique, so I just murmured that it was the rule. Fortunately, it was way past her bedtime and she no longer cared less for grammatical nuances than the coziness of a dreamless sleep.

We could all use a good sleep from all these shenanigans, don’t we?

If only. Like the PKFZ quagmire, all these are headaches that are in for the long term.

Headaches that we seemed to be gearing up to inherit our children and- if we’re not careful – their children, too.

Right up to the point where money are UNCOUNTABLE nouns because there are none to count in the first place.

“Where’re all the money gone too and where are all the cash?”